Cycling’s Bradley Wiggins to Make Attempt at One-Hour Record – Wall Street Journal

The cycling world, for the most part, would prefer to forget the 1990s—doping allegations, stripped titles, a generally bad scene. But over the past year, the sport has managed to salvage at least one trend: the one-hour record.

It is the excruciating exercise of riding as far as you can for 60 minutes. And since a significant change to the regulations governing it last May, this archaic mark is suddenly fashionable again.

In the past 11 months, six men have taken a shot at it. Three have succeeded. Two more are on deck, including Tour de France winner and three-time Olympic gold medalist Bradley Wiggins, who formally added his name to the list on Wednesday. He will make his long-awaited attempt at what he called the “Holy Grail for cyclists” on June 7 in London.

For now, the distance to beat belongs to Australia’s Rohan Dennis, who set the mark in his first attempt in February with 52.491 kilometers. “I’ve never had a world record to my name,” Dennis said. “How many people have, really?”

The one-hour record dates, in some form, to 1876, when it was set by an American riding a penny farthing—an old-time bike with a huge front wheel. It has captured cycling’s imagination sporadically since then, despite periods of widespread doping in the sport. Legends such as Jacques Anquetil, Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx all held it at points from the 1950s to the 1970s. Then, in the 1990s alone, it was broken seven times.

But since cycling’s governing body, the UCI, regulated the record beyond relevance in 2000, it lay dormant with only one improvement in 2005.

Because of arguments over what constituted appropriate technology, it split into two marks. One of them, the so-called Athlete’s Hour, had to be completed on an antiquated bike similar to the one Merckx rode when he broke the record in 1972. The other, known as the Best Human Effort, allowed riders to grab every aerodynamic advantage this side of Formula One. It led to attempts like Chris Boardman’s successful one in 2000. He rode on a futuristic, Lotus-designed bike leaning so far forward that his style was called the Superman position.

The result: Cyclists stopped caring for more than a decade. So the UCI simplified the rules to make any bike that is permitted in endurance track events permissible.

“We’re really happy with how a rule change like that has, in effect, created something out of nothing,” UCI president Brian Cookson said in a telephone interview, pointing out that anyone who attempts it must be in the biological-passport testing pool, meaning they are subject to regular examination.

Not everyone is thrilled about the unified record. Fabian Cancellara, an expert in time trials and one-day classics, lost interest after the change. He wanted to break it on a Merckx-style bike, stripping away the impact of current technology. (Of course, Merckx sought out a different kind of advantage by making his 1972 attempt at altitude in Mexico City.)

Still, Cancellara is in the minority. Something about the hour appeals to road racers and track specialists alike. They see it as a new challenge.

“It feels modern again for some reason,” said Team Sky manager Dave Brailsford, who worked with Wiggins for five years. “From a technological point of view, it’s back into an exciting era.”

The first to try for the new unified record was German cycling great Jens Voigt, who broke it in his swan song as a professional last fall. Backed by his sponsor Trek, he turned it into a spectator event. And like the first person to decide that vintage sneakers were cool again, he played a big role in bringing it back to the professional peloton.

For Dennis, it wasn’t about a new set of technicalities. It was about putting his money where his mouth was. As a time-trial specialist with a background on the track, he figured he would have a chance to break whatever record Voigt lay down. More than a chance, actually.

“I shot my mouth off a little bit, being a bit cheeky,” Dennis said with a grin. “I just said that I would smash him. I said that he’d break the record, but I’d make his record look stupid.”

As it turned out, when Dennis clipped into his pedals at the Velodrome Suisse in Grenchen, Switzerland, on Feb. 8, he wasn’t chasing Voigt’s record anymore. By that time, the mark belonged to Austria’s Matthias Brandle, who had added 742 meters’ worth of suffering, about eight football fields.

No cyclist—track, road or country mailman—is built to sit in the saddle, locked in the aerodynamic position for a whole hour. Road racers often push for an hour in time trials, but the form isn’t as rigid. Dennis had never done it before his attempt, not even in training. The longest he had gone during his winter preparation was 30 minutes. “That second half was a real unknown,” he said.

Pumping his pedals at a rate of around 105 strokes a minute, Dennis got himself in the zone. He kept his head down and focused on his line around the track. He overheard snippets of conversations. He heard a couple of songs. Come to think of it, there might have been music playing the whole time. Dennis didn’t notice. “It’s a weird type of feeling,” he said. The pedals felt like they were moving faster than his feet.

After the halfway point, things got even weirder. He began to pick up more details around him, the telltale sign that things were beginning to go downhill. And he got thirsty. With 20 minutes to go, in searing pain, he smelled something in the arena: coffee. Sausages. Every swing around the second bend, they were there. “You’re kidding me,” he thought.

He squirmed on the bike, counting down the laps. He glanced at the board until, finally, he was sure. “I knew that was about eight minutes to go,” he said. “I knew I was going to break it. At that stage it was just about by how much.”

The answer was 639 meters. When he got off the bike, people told him he looked fresh. They asked if there was more in the tank. “But there was definitely none left,” he said.

To Dennis’s surprise, when he returned to the road, other riders wanted to talk to him about it. And the curiosity has spread. At a time when GPS trackers such as Strava have allowed amateur cyclists to obsess over personal records, the simplicity of the hour mark has a natural appeal.

How much longer interest will last might depend on Wiggins. Even Cookson called him “a pretty safe bet to break the record.”

“If he does it, it’s going to make that benchmark unreachable for a while,” Dennis said. “If he doesn’t break it, it’ll probably discourage 99% of the people in cycling.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com